Let’s look at how this would happen.

1) Say you have three ebooks (the minimum any author could get away with publishing.) They could also be Public Domain, or rewritten PLR (private license rights) books.

On ebooks, the first is free, the second you give away for an email, and the third you sell, as well as the collection. All have Lead Magnets in them to get the readers onto your mailing list as a subscriber.

(In addition to having an autoresponder service, this considers that you have a site and your own domain with landing pages for each book that you can update with all the various sales links.)

2) Now you publish via CreateSpace and Lulu to create the paperbacks and hardback versions of these.

3) Next, you record the audio for these books and sell the audiobooks on Audible and Authors Republic, as well as offering them on your own site.

4) At this point, you can sell the collection on BitTorrent, as well as the other 7 digital product marketplaces. (And on some, you’ll give a handsome affiliate commission for people selling them for you.)

5) The next logical action, particularly for non-fiction, is to create introductory courses for each book. These courses are put onto Udemy and OpenSesame, and also on marketplaces such as Small Business Trends Marketplace.

6) Next is to create more expensive, full courses which can be hosted on your own site or taught via Teachable and/or Thinkific. They can simply ported to OpenSesame as well. (And have them promoted as above.)

7) Through your newsletter, you’ve been keeping in touch with your audience as they progress through your trust circles and become ever closer. Meanwhile, you are recommending solutions (found in your materials) which they can use to become more entertained, educated, or inspired.

You are profiting at every stage. And can organize various sets of materials to create new products.

I didn’t mention that you can use the audio to podcast, which would then promote your courses and materials – and could actually be created from the lessons themselves. Your show notes can have special discount coupons for the courses and ebooks.

See how this works? Fortunately, most of these either direct deposit or pay via PayPal, so you don’t get tired out carrying sacks of money to the bank and then having to wait in line to deposit.

This is truly semi-automatic passive income which will last for years after you are gone.

This doesn’t mean that’s all you do. Obviously, running promotional ads and being a guest on other’s podcasts will improve your sales. And those are necessary investments of time and money in order to improve income.

What do you do when you’ve gotten all this publishing done?

Start in with your next series of books – and turn them into all these versions. Your goal is to turn all your books into courses and everything in between.

This is the next phase for public domain publishing. No longer is it a problem in how you can get a few hundred PD works up and compete with everyone else at low, low prices.

Research a problem area in a niche you are interested in.

Find a collection of books that fill solve that niche problem.

Edit them into professional shape.

Improve their cover, description, and give them respectable prices (not the “race to the bottom” Amazon encourages.)

Publish them as a series and a bundle.

Publish the paperbacks and hardback editions.

Record and publish the audiobooks.

Create a podcast series based on those books which promote the other versions.

Create a series of courses, an intro for the series, plus an intro and “master class” for each book.

Promote all these materials.

Then research a new problem area – based on your audiences concerns – and produce a new series of books in this area. Rinse/repeat.

The other option, especially with your most popular courses, is to come out with post-grad course built on additional material that author referred to or a subsequent book of his. (Napoleon Hill, for instance, actually had three bestsellers, not just the one.)

You can also re-launch your original books and courses with the post-grad versions.

As you keep building new book series, audiobooks, and courses each year, you’ll soon have a deep backbench of books which have their own related materials people can keep on buying.

And eventually, you have that publishing empire and hire a freelance publicist to keep everything raking in income hand over fist.

Just so you can keep finding more books to help people with their problems. And your biggest problem is finding who is worthy enough to inherit your publishing business to…